Dublin-born, Leitrim-based film maker and musician Willie Stewart has unveiled his latest film. A visual response to a residency held at Glor in Ennis, Co Clare with artist, musician and Stewart’s fellow Woven Skull member Natalia Beylis and musician Tola Custy, the half-hour long Black Birds Slowed Down is a quietly compelling documentary, honing in how artists different musical backgrounds compare approaches and influences on music and creativity.
Last year the Belfast Film Festival opened with Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s Mustang, a modern Turkish fairytale about a group of sisters dealing with the challenges of puberty in a small, conservative seaside village. This time around, up the road from the buzz of the Julian Barratt’s delirious Mindhorn, opening night gave us another intimately observed film about a coterie of young girls on the cusp of adulthood. The subjects of All This Panic, directed and shot by Jenny Gage and her cinematographer partner Thomas Betterton, are not subject to the same level of lock-and-key control and captivity, the six girls…
You may not have noticed yet, but Dublin-based filmmaker John Mulvaney is doing an invaluable service for the Irish underground scene in his short-form documentary series, Fractured. Each short film zones in on members of some of the best under-the-radar heavy and/or experimental artists in the country, piecing together a range of evocative cinematographic fragments of the musicians and their surroundings, soundtracked to candid aural insights from the respective musicians and their music. Mulvaney’s evident passion and respect for the music has continually led to a carefully crafted portrait of each artist, with every instalment accumulating to more than the…
One of the all-time great music films ‘DIG!‘ is to be screened at The Menagerie on Friday July 18 by garage/psych/shoegaze/dream-pop-oriented showrunners Salvation. The film was the winner of Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival and was written, directed & produced by Ondi Timonder – who won the same award for her phenomenal documentary film We Live In Public. Compiled from seven years of footage, it charters the relationships and careers of The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre and their frontmen – Courtney Taylor-Taylor and Anton Newcombe, respectively – and how their career paths diverged for commercial, artistic, creative, personality…
Draperstown man Dermot McBride, a man heavily involved with all things Glasgowbury-related, has unveiled his half hour documentary looking at the history and importance of the local homegrown music festival. With just over two weeks left until the 13th annual Glasgowbury festival in Eagle’s Rock, A Culture of Small but Massive features interviews with artists and individuals who have played or been involved in the festival including Cahir O’Doherty (Jetplane Landing/Fighting With Wire), Jonny Black (LaFaro), Tony Wright (VerseChorusVerse), Shauna Tohill (Silhouette) and Rory Friers (And So I Watch You From Afar). According to McBride – who filmed the documentary…